How to set up Click-to-WhatsApp ads and route every lead into your inbox

What you are building

A Click-to-WhatsApp ad is a Facebook or Instagram ad whose button opens a WhatsApp chat with your business instead of a website. To set up Click-to-WhatsApp ads properly you need three parts working together: the ad in Meta Ads Manager, the WhatsApp number it points to, and whatever answers the chat when it arrives. Most disappointing ad campaigns fail on the third part: leads arrive at 10:40 pm, nobody replies until the next afternoon, and the lead has already called a competitor.

This guide sets up all three, using Broadchat as the system that receives the chats. It is for businesses on the WhatsApp Business Platform that sell through conversations: clinics, coaching institutes, real-estate developers, travel agencies, high-ticket D2C brands. If you only want a few chats a day and answer from your phone, ads can point to the WhatsApp Business app instead, without an API.

Step 1: check the number and display name

Before spending on ads, open Channels → All Channels in Broadchat and check three things on the WhatsApp channel: the status is connected, the display name is approved, and the quality rating is not Low. An ad sends strangers to this number, so the name they see at the top of the chat must match the brand in the ad. If you have not connected a number yet, follow how to set up the WhatsApp Business API first.

Your messaging limit matters less here than for broadcasts. Ad leads message you first, and replies inside the customer service window do not count toward the limit on unique people you can start conversations with.

Step 2: link your Facebook Page to the WhatsApp number

Meta's developer documentation for ads that click to WhatsApp lists "a Facebook page with WhatsApp number linked manually or via API" as a prerequisite. The manual route is in the Page's settings under linked accounts, where you add the WhatsApp number; Meta's Business Help Center article on connecting a Page to WhatsApp has the current steps. You can link more than one number to a Page, but each ad points to one.

Use the Page that carries the same brand as the WhatsApp display name. A lead who taps an ad from "Sunrise Skin & Hair" and lands in a chat named "SR Healthcare Pvt Ltd" may think they have been redirected somewhere else.

Step 3: build the first-reply chatbot

Build the bot before the ad goes live, so the first lead gets an instant answer. In Broadchat:

1. Open Chatbots → Chatbots and create a new chatbot on the channel the ad points to.
2. Choose the Click to WhatsApp Ads trigger. Leave Meta Ad ID empty to catch every ad, or enter specific ad IDs to give each ad its own bot, for example one for a hair-fall ad and one for an acne ad.
3. Add a greeting that uses the ad's details. The trigger makes {{ad_headline}}, {{ad_source_id}}, {{ad_source_url}} and {{ctwa_clid}} available, and also saves them on the contact's bot fields so later bots can use them.
4. Ask one or two qualifying questions with reply buttons: which branch, which service, when they want to start.
5. Add a Working Hours step so a lead at night is told honestly when a person will reply.
6. End with Assign to Agent, so the chat lands with the right person in CRM → Live Chat with the answers already collected.

This trigger fires even if the contact is in the middle of another bot conversation, because a new ad click is a new intent. The chatbot builder page lists the other triggers and steps you can add.

Step 4: create the campaign in Ads Manager

Meta's instructions for creating ads that click to WhatsApp are short:

1. Go to Ads Manager and click Create.
2. Choose a campaign objective and name the campaign. Pick the objective by what you want Meta to optimise for; Meta's Business Help Center describes which objectives offer a messaging destination.
3. Under Conversions, select Messaging Apps as the conversion location.
4. Under Messaging Apps, select WhatsApp, and choose the Page and the WhatsApp number from step 2.

If the number does not appear, the Page link from step 2 is missing or was made from a different business portfolio. Fix the link rather than creating a new Page.

Step 5: set audience, budget and schedule

Meta recommends running ads that click to WhatsApp for at least seven days and notes that broader audiences tend to perform better. For a local business, that tension is real: a Jaipur clinic gains nothing from leads in Kochi. Use location targeting around the areas you actually serve, and let Meta optimise within it rather than stacking many narrow interests.

Size the budget to what your team can answer. An illustrative way to think about it: if one agent can properly handle about 40 new ad conversations a day alongside existing chats, and you have two agents, a budget that produces 200 chats a day will leave most of them waiting. Start smaller, measure reply times and scale up.

Step 6: write the creative and the pre-filled message

Ads that click to WhatsApp support image, video, carousel and slideshow formats. Three rules help:

• One promise per ad. "Free skin consultation this week at Vaishali Nagar" beats a list of services.
• A pre-filled message that names the offer. The customer sends it with one tap. "I'd like the free skin consultation" tells your bot and your agent exactly what the lead wants.
• Say it opens WhatsApp. People are more willing to tap when they know they are starting a chat, not filling a form.

Step 7: report conversions back to Meta

Without conversion data, Meta optimises your ads for people who start chats, which is not the same as people who book or buy. Each message from an ad carries a click ID (ctwa_clid) in its referral data. Meta's Conversions API accepts events with action_source set to business_messaging and that click ID, so you can tell Meta which chats turned into customers.

In Broadchat:

1. On the channel, open Manage Dataset for CAPI and create or choose a dataset.
2. In your chatbot, at the point a lead qualifies or pays, add a Send Conversion Event step and choose the event, for example LeadSubmitted when the form questions are answered, QualifiedLead when an appointment is booked, or Purchase when payment is received. You can add custom data such as value and currency.
3. The step attaches the contact's most recent ad click ID automatically. If the contact did not come from an ad, the step reports that there is no click ID instead of sending a wrong event.

Step 8: test, publish and watch the first 48 hours

Preview the ad on your phone, tap the button and send the pre-filled message. Check that the bot answered, the questions saved, and the chat arrived with the right agent in CRM → Live Chat. Then publish. For the first two days, watch three things: time to first human reply, the share of chats that answer your qualifying questions, and the share that book or buy. If people stop answering at a particular bot question, that question is the problem, not the ad.

What the chats cost

You pay Meta for the ad as with any other ad. The WhatsApp messages are a separate question, and for ad leads they are often free. When a customer messages you from a Click-to-WhatsApp ad and you reply within 24 hours, that reply opens a free entry point window of up to 7 days in which Meta does not charge for marketing, utility, authentication or service messages. The exception is messages generated by Meta Business Agent, Meta's own AI agent, which are charged even inside the window. The 7-day length replaced the older 72 hours in late September 2026, so ignore older articles quoting three days.

In Broadchat, messages are reserved against the channel's conversation wallet when sent and then reconciled with the pricing information Meta returns; messages Meta marks as not billable are refunded to the wallet. Our explainer on when WhatsApp messages are free covers every free case, and the cost-per-message guide covers what happens after the window ends.

The opt-in rule for ad leads

A person who messaged you from an ad agreed to talk about that ad, not to receive your future promotions. Before you add an ad lead to marketing broadcasts, ask in the chat, for example: "Would you like us to send you offers and new-service updates on WhatsApp? [Yes, send updates] [No thanks]". Tag the yes answers in CRM → Tags. This is the cleanest way to grow a marketing list from ads, and the opt-in list guide shows other sources. Click-to-WhatsApp ads are one channel in a wider plan; the WhatsApp marketing strategy guide shows where they fit. Agencies that run ads for clients can sell this whole setup under their own brand through the partner program.